Mudenge says Mugabe has never refused to go

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Mudenge says Mugabe has never refused to go

Former Foreign Minister Stan Mudenge said President Robert Mugabe had never refused to go but there was a campaign to discredit him in an attempt to frustrate the land reform programme he had embarked on.

In a letter to United States secretary of State Collin Powell, Mudenge said during the liberation struggle, Mugabe, who led the forces that brought freedom, democracy and the rule of law to Zimbabwe after years of illegality and racist oppression, was the target of such a vicious racist smear campaign by the adversaries of freedom and independence.

“Those same negative forces have never forgiven him for his role in the demise of their hegemony and have now regrouped and seized on his efforts to effect a fair and just land reform to orchestrate a vicious and malicious character assassination in an attempt to frustrate his efforts to correct, once and for all, the grotesque and skewed land distribution system in this country, where one percent of the population owns 70% of the arable land.

“Perceptions are being created that President Mugabe, whose mandate the people of Zimbabwe have overwhelmingly renewed in successive elections held in accordance with the constitution of our country and acknowledged to be free and fair by all, is ‘refusing to go’.

“The fact that President Mugabe is serving a term of office to which the people of Zimbabwe elected him, and that the same people will, next year, exercise their constitutional right to elect a president of their choice is being cynically ignored.”

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The Insider is a political and business bulletin about Zimbabwe, edited by Charles Rukuni. Founded in 1990, it was a printed 12-page subscription only newsletter until 2003 when Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation made it impossible to continue printing.